The search for more general truths in international relations leads to an examination of the basic forces that shape the conduct of foreign relations. This has been a major preoccupation of the new study of international relations. Scholarly observers holding up a mirror to international society note certain common features, some going back to the Greeks, others to the Treaty of Westphalia, others to the French Revolution, and still others to the Industrial Revolution. Some theorists identify a few elemental facts or “laws” of politics whose recurrence spans all historical eras: for example, Thucydides, Hobbes, the Federalists, and contemporary political realists speak with one voice about the stubborn reality of the balance of power. Underlying present-day international relations, however, the basic forces which give content to international behavior are for the most part the product of modern history. Nationalism and industrialization are new-fangled ideas which had to await fundamental social and economic changes. For Arnold Toynbee the fundamental forces of modern international relations are westernization, contemporary nationalism, and the rise of masses. The clue may be found in this triad to much of the bewilderingly complex and rapidly changing movement of international events. Any effort to understand Toynbee's approach to world politics must comprehend these elements in his thinking. With the publication of the last four volumes of his major work, we are able to view for the first time the full canvas on which he has traced their influence.

This article compares reflections from four sources on the state of the American democracy in the international community (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, by Paul Kennedy; 1999: Victory Without War, by Richard Nixon; “Communism at Bay,”The Economist; Long Cycles in World Politics, by George Modelski) within the framework of the 1980s, which was portrayed by leaders as “an era of good feelings.” Yet drastically different positions on American rise or decline are propounded by historians and officeholders, former presidents and scholars, journalists and aspiring candidates for political office. These four writings reveal the complexity of the analysis of the American decline. Yet, it is crucial for leaders to maintain public devotion to their nation, not through passion, but rather, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, through “the solid quarry of sober reason,”. America's capacity to preserve a strong and healthy resilience, the author concludes, is the exceptional value it continues to offer the world.

Introduced by a few small religious liberal-arts colleges in the 1940s, the reformist movement toward studying peace has recently gained momentum in larger academic auditoriums. The author cites prominent academicians currently examining this trend and presents the case for accepting grass-roots social activism as a crucial link to the closed world of policy-making elites. He places faith in individual thinkers to provide new insights and practical theories of peace studies in both national and international domains.

In a recent report by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs, “Education in U.S. Schools of International Affairs,” Princeton's former president Robert F. Goheen presents several crucial factors in the apparent decline of international studies in the U.S. The private sector, which at first demanded broadly-educated professionals, have recently shown little enthusiasm for students of international affairs. This has resulted in lack of funding and lack of interest in the field of international studies. This is paradoxical primarily because the students of international affairs undergo a multidiscplinary curriculum, facilitating their adaptation to practically any field of work following graduation, contrary to those students who have chosen a strict and narrow profession. Unfortunately, much of the fault, according to the report lies with the universities and the graduates themselves, who fail to articulate properly their comparative essential advantage in the broad field of their education. Thompson expounds on a more serious ramification of the decline in interest in international studies: the imminent failure to foresee future international crises. As the case of Iraq's growing power in the Middle East has demonstrated, the U.S. looked the other way, toward the developments in the former Soviet Union, and was not able to act in time to circumvent Iraq's aggression. With the world looking to the U.S. for strategic leadership in ethics and power, Americans cannot afford to deny American youth a strong foundation and education in international studies.

In an era of profound social change, when all aspects of national and international life are under scrutiny and review, it is vital that successes and failures in international scientific and educational relations be examined. The most dramatic success story in recent times may be the cooperative programs in agriculture that have led to the “green revolution.” The history of this remarkable effort can be measured against the criteria of the development of cooperative solutions to urgent “human species problems” and of building indigenous capacity through the training of leaders. If it is true that the core of international cultural relations is the purposeful exchange of knowledge and skills, especially knowledge and skills that can be used toward solving problems affecting the entire world, agricultural program can also be measured against this standard.

It is said by some observers of politics and foreign policy that morality has nothing to do with the vital issues of national and international politics. Experienced practitioners note that seldom if ever are moral issues invoked in serious policy discussions; politics and foreign policy are a practical art in which interest and power prevail. Others take issue with this view claiming that from its history America has derived a high responsibility unique among states to stand for certain moral ends and purposes. From its history it has been a nation set apart; its place in the world is dependent on faithfulness to its founding creed embodied in the Declaration of Independence and other statements down to the Atlantic Charter.

The question was raised at the end of World War II as to whether or not international relations could stand as a separate field of study. Views were expressed by scholars and teachers in history and political science to the effect that in substance there was nothing peculiar to the subject matter of international relations which did not fall under other separate fields of social studies. At some universities and colleges there were dissenters to this prevailing viewpoint. Their particular philosophy manifested itself in attempts to create and establish integrated curricula under academic committees or departments dedicated to the broad generalized study of die subject matter of the field. It is still too early to pass judgment with any finality on the merits of these two points of view, the one viewing international relations as a mere duplication of the subject matter of many fields; the odier insisting that diere must be an ordering and integrative approach to die field. No serious student would presume to claim that die study of international relations had arrived at die stage of an independent academic discipline. However, there have been three significant developments within no more than a single generation which illuminate certain aspects of this problem. First we have witnessed the evolution and development of a point of focus or core in the field. Secondly, diere have been die first faint and feeble beginnings of attempts to create a mediodology appropriate for the field, or at least to determine those related mediodologies in the social sciences whose methods and techniques could most usefully be appropriated for the study of persistent international issues. Thirdly, inventories have been drawn up by individual scholars, universities and institutes, of topics and concrete projects which would best serve in the development of general principles in the field and the validation of them dirough systematic inquiry.

Few periods in history have left observers more unsettled and anxious than our contemporaries about the sufficiency of prevailing moral and political diagnoses. The din of public debate drowning out quiet thought and reflection may explain some of the confusion. Yet the strident clashes that break out between right and left, and with increasing frequency and fervor between radicals and liberals, compound but have not created the problem. Instead, the core of the problem appears to be a widespread questioning sweeping across society and sowing seeds of doubt about the sufficiency of all past and present social and political doctrines. For the first time in their lives more and more people express uncertainty that any prevailing doctrine meets our needs and on this there is less of a generational gap than is sometimes assumed.

This article deals with the introduction of strongly fundamental views into the theory and practice of politics. It also concerns the transformation of religion from a concern with religious faith to the creation of political religions. Thus forces have been at work in the past two decades seeking to make a religion of politics and transforming religion into a holy political crusade in the form of a particular version of partisan politics.

International relations have been the object of widespread study and review in the United States since World War I. Attention has focussed alternately on the flow of events, the goals and standards, and the underlying principles of world affairs. Primary emphasis has been directed to empirical, normative and theoretical problems. Along the way, scholars, statesmen and observers have singled out certain factors from the myriad dimensions of international society. Students have looked for concepts and methodologies by which order and meaning could be derived in this as in other complex fields.